What Got Me Started On…

Well, maybe “started” is too strong a word.

Stepney Green Tube Station

But over the past decade or so, one the things I’ve been trying to balance is the inherent accuracy offered through photography against a desire mute a viewer’s natural inclination to spend time searching for details…Details that satisfy curiosity, but which don’t really inform.

I was on some kind of quest in London during a visit in 2001 and ended up at Stepney Green. It was the middle of the day and the station was much quieter than those closer to the city center. The station was fairly dim, and I ended making the shot at 1/5th of a second, using a 15mm lens on a Voightlander Bessa rangefinder body.

The station environment is rendered with a fair amount of detail, though the lighting forces some shadows. You see all you need to see of the departing train. And people are in various states of blur. Between distance, blur, and lighting, you’re not going to be able to tell what brand of shoes they are wearing — but that’s just fine.

This is another of those shots that I wasn’t sure was going to work out. But it helped point my thinking towards different ways of representing people pictorially.